Rodney Knox was on his way to a doctor’s appointment at noon last Monday when he spotted the front of an unfamiliar car sticking out from the embankment behind his neighbor’s parking spot at Country Pines Apartments in Eddington.
He slowed down to take a second look and realized that the silver Toyota SUV had rolled down the wooded embankment behind the paved parking spot, and the open driver’s-side door had hit a tree.
He pulled into an adjacent parking spot and went to the edge of the embankment to investigate. That’s when Knox, 69, saw his neighbor, Peggy Moro, trapped between the open car door and a tree.
Knox said he saw the rear of the car stalled at a steep angle after it knocked down some shrubs. The keys were still in the ignition, he said, but the car wasn’t running.
Knox called out to Moro repeatedly, but received no response. He dialed 911, and then went back to calling her name.
Moro, 79, had died after being pinned between the car and the tree.
Knox on Monday described his neighbor of about two-and-a-half years as a nice woman who lived alone — and who was meticulous about her car.
When Knox and his wife moved to the Country Pines Apartments complex in Eddington, Moro had already been living in the unit next door for decades.
Moro lived alone, so Knox and his wife would help her out occasionally, bringing her food, running errands and checking on her after she had knee surgery.
Knox remembered how meticulously Moro cared for her car — obsessively, he said. Every time Moro parked, he said, she backed in to her spot and got out to check to see if she had parked within the two tire tracks that were still visible in her parking spot Monday.
“Every time she had a little scratch or ding she’d have it fixed,” Knox said.
On the morning of her death, Moro had taken her car to the repair shop and come back with a rental car — the silver Toyota Knox did not recognize. According to Knox, she must have backed in and gotten out to confirm she had parked properly, per her usual routine.
Based on the scene he found and his observations of how Knox backed her car into her spot every day, Knox said the car likely started rolling back down the slight incline of the parking spot into the steep embankment, and Moro tried to get back in to stop it from moving by switching it into drive.
The car appeared to have rolled back and the driver’s-side door rammed into the tree, trapping Moro between the two, Knox said. Damage from the door was still visible on the tree Monday.
After he found Moro dead, Knox spoke to multiple police officers, he said, including deputies from the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office, where the case remains under investigation.
The sheriff’s office has not released many details about the incident beyond a brief description and Moro’s identity. The office did not provide any updates Monday.
The week following her death, Moro’s family cleaned out her apartment and tasked Knox with updating them after police release additional information.
“She was a nice lady. It was pretty sad to see her like that,” Knox said. “It was a total freak accident.”